Relief in the works for congested Raeford Road in Fayetteville

Jean Powell has been driving on Raeford Road in and out of Fayetteville for more than 30 years.

"It's changed so much," said the Hoke County commissioner, who has lived and worked in both places.

What was once a rural road is now lined with clusters of stores, restaurants and housing developments, with bumper-to-bumper traffic at the busiest times of day.

"You just have to allow more time," Powell said, "and if there's an accident, forget it."

There were nearly 2,500 wrecks on that corridor in a three-year stretch before 2011. The average rate of 727 crashes per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was more than double the state average for similar roads.

The past and present of Raeford Road are well documented, but planners are busy preparing for its immediate and long-term future, which includes two hospitals and a VA center, that will add significant amounts of traffic.

A new study recommends guidelines for development to limit congestion along the heavily traveled corridor over the next 30 years. The suggestions include more bus routes and cycle lanes to access roads between developments to keep traffic off the road.

In the shorter term, the state Department of Transportation is looking to help traffic flow more smoothly on the lanes that are already there.

"They're trying to avoid as many major impacts as possible," said Michael Rutan, a transportation planner with the Fayetteville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The latter project will include concrete medians from Robeson Street to Seventy-First School Road to limit left turns across traffic between stoplights. A similar project on Ramsey Street prompted some complaints but cut wrecks there by more than 50 percent.

The medians would allow inbound traffic to pass the Skibo Road intersection without stopping. That junction is Raeford Road's most hectic, with 43,000 vehicles a day passing through it in 2012.

"Raeford Road is kind of crazy, especially when you get to Skibo and have to turn," said Lorrie Webster, who works at the Rite Aid drugstore just west of the intersection.

"I've seen cars hit that guardrail every month, it seems like," said Rob Vallejo as he ate breakfast at the Waffle House nearby. "It's this intersection that's the busiest."

The $28.4 million project is tentatively scheduled to start construction in November 2017.

While traffic at Skibo Road has always been heavy, showing only slight growth since 1998, the same is not true at the Hoke County line. The 15,000 vehicles a day crossing it on Raeford Road in 1998 had climbed to 24,000 by 2012. Hoke is one of the fastest-growing counties in the U.S., with a 28 percent population increase from 2000 to 2010.

A new congestion management plan for southeastern Hoke and southwestern Cumberland counties highlights improvements that should be part of any new development on the corridor to help ease congestion.

"The area is, in fact, changing fairly rapidly," said Scott Lane, the consultant who compiled the findings. "A lot of things are going to happen between now and 2040."

The study focused on the area from the town of Raeford to Bingham Drive in Fayetteville. Currently, 78 percent of the people who work in the area commute from outside, but 3 1/2times that number leave the area to work elsewhere, Lane said.

The study highlights likely growth spots along the corridor where commercial and mixed-use development could allow the people who live in the area to work closer to home, reducing congestion.

The study suggests measures such as parallel access roads be made part of new developments, to limit access points to Raeford Road and make neighboring properties easier to access without using the highway.

The study cost $410,000 and was paid for with a mix of local, state and federal money, said Rick Heicksen. He is director of FAMPO, which commissioned the report as part of the ongoing Transportation Improvement Plan it is required to produce and maintain.

The plan will bolster local requests for money to pay for transportation projects.

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